I think this may be the first film I've
ever highlighted that was important to me when I was a kid. By the
word "important," I mean "made me wet myself with glee", but you know how
it is. The Monster Squad was effectively The Goonies versus the
monsters of Universal Studios....which is weird, because none of the kids
were in the Goonies and Universal didn't make this flick. The story
in a nutshell: A bunch of 5th Graders (and one chain-smoking 8th
Grader) end up fighting evil in the form of Dracula, The Wolfman, The
Mummy, The Creature from the Black Lagoon (henceforth referred to as the
Gillman), and even Frankenstein. Holy freaking crap. During
the horror movies in the 1980's, most of the flicks were about the NEW
horror standards: run up the stairs to get away from the slasher in
the mask, ripping off Alien, and well, Jason, Jason, Jason, Jason.
This movie brought back all those old-school horror monsters that we
hadn't seen in a while (except for people who would change them so much
they didn't count. Lost Boys may have had vampires, but Kiefer
Sutherland was no Dracula). Keep in mind that neither Hollywood
macrohit "Mary Shelley's Frankenstein" or "Bram Stoker's Dracula" were out
yet...The Monster Squad at least seemed to me at the time to be the first
to blatantly just recreate the old-school monsters (in the
late
80's). Point is, Monster Squad was my favorite movie until my balls
dropped and I started drinking things NOT in a spill-proof cup with Donald
Duck on it. Monster Squad is also one of the few films that
reintroduces my favorite monster: The Gillman. If you've
actually seen The Creature from the Black Lagoon (and its 2 sequels....one
of which includes the Gillman getting plastic surgery and walking around
in a trenchcoat touching himself...no joke) you'd know that's what they
all call the dear sweet fishman. If you've been visiting the site
for a while, you're already aware of my deep passion for any type of
piscine-human crossbreed by the sheer fact that there's about about a
hundred paintings of them in the Strange Art section. For some
reason, whenever I stop paying attention, I start drawing fishmen.
It's like Stephen King's The Dark Half, only I have a fishman in my brain.
Me loves me some Gillman (even if they didn't put him on the poster).
In retrospect, my love for all monsters fish-related may have something to
do with the design of the Gillman in this movie. Let's move on
before I go into total fanboy mode.

Instead of walking you
through the film step by step, let's get the set-up out of the way so
I
can just talk about monsters, because after all, that's why I'm here.
The whole movie takes place in the incredibly small town of Plotville.
I call it that because, like most movies, it's incredibly lucky that this
movie takes place here. You see, Dracula hops onto a cargo plane
that's apparently shipping a big box labelled "Bavaria: Frankenstein."
For the love of God. Did the UPS guys get paid to NOT ask any
question? Is customs concerned when you're transporting giant zombie
corpses? Still, having the name of the monster painted in big bold
letters on the side of the box isn't too weird in this film because
everything's completely over the top and you'd be criminal to look too
deep into it. Anyway, the plane's pilot opens the cargo hold
dumping Frankenstein's body into the swamp below (pilot must have worked
for Northwestern), and Dracula transmogrifies into a rubber bat on a
string to chase after it. For the most part, the special effects in
this movie aren't bad at all...mainly they got the costumes dead-on for
your classic monstrosities. I still can't explain why the director
threw in so many rubber bats though.
Maybe there's some contractual stipulation stating that if Dracula's in a
film then YOU MUST HAVE RUBBER BATS
ON STRINGS. I just don't know.

It's also important to
keep in mind that this is indeed a kids
movie and you're really not going to see much violence or whatever
on-screen (or implied off-screen for that matter). Oddly enough
there is the implication that Dracula kidnaps some cheerleaders and turns
them into his vampiric bimbo/fan-girls....but that's as dark as this flick
gets. It's like that Friday the 13th that takes place during
a children's summer camp...sure there are kids all over the place but you
can't be expecting to see Jason caving in their little skulls with a
hammer or anything. Hell, it's not cool to kill kids even if the
movies not FOR kids. Hell, when you can only look forward to seeing
Dracula being thwarted by a fat kid holding a slice of pizza (with
garlic) to his face, you really have to keep your expectations in check.
Oh and just so you know I'm not lying:

Please enjoy this picture
of Dracula having his face melted off by a fat kid with a slice of pizza.
Let's get on with the "plot" shall we?

Dracula
summons his "army of darkness" to assist him...The Wolfman, who's already
been running around on-screen, shows up in all his hairy glory, quickly
followed by the Mummy. Did I say quickly? I mean the Mummy
shows up on time because he checked the Bus schedule and left 9 hours
early so he'd waddle in like my grandmother on time. I really have
no love for mummies, but I'll expand on that later. Point is,
Dracula's organizing his
MonsterFriends (like the SuperFriends, only less gay). The surprise
monster of this movie is, both sadly and with much awesome, the Gillman.
The Gillman only gets two scenes in the film, despite the fact that his
costume is the by far the show-stealer. He shows up early in the
film to lift Frankenstein's box out of the water....and
that's about all he does in the film. :sigh: There's more to
it, but now's not the time. I will point out how incredibly lucky
Dracula is that Frankenstein's corpse landed in a town with an authentic
werewolf, Fish-monster, and a 2000-year old Mummy. I can just
imagine what help Vlad would have found if he'd landed in Po-Dunk,
Kentucky:

Shut up and be grateful
I didn't try to draw the Were-Cooter. Oh and if you're from Kentucky
I'd love to hear about what kind of local monster legends you have going
on.

By the way, you'd have
to think that Dracula would be pretty stupid to be reanimating
Frankenstein. I mean, did Dracula not read the book? Wasn't
the monster there a tragic figure that just wanted to be happy?
Nevertheless, Dracula sends Frank out to go kill some kids (and get back
Van Helsing's missing diary) and is totally surprised when Frankenstein
betrays him and runs off to play in the children's treehouse. Hell,
Frankie even joins the kid's "Purge the World of Monsters" squad.
Remember: If you must reanimate or enlist the aid of monsters based
off classic literature, make sure you actually read the book first.
You'd think that an immortal, with all the time in the world, would
eventually get around to reading Frankenstein. Bah. I
don't want to mention how the monsters all do a total spaz dance when
Frankenstein comes to life, but if you ever wanted to see the Mummy try to
do "The Robot" then this is the film for you.

The kids are pretty
ridiculously lucky as well (besides having Frankenstein join their little
social club)...since this movie is, after all, all about entertaining the
young kids with monsters that are considered "wholesome" by modern
standards. A group of kids in Plotville have a secret club called,
very creatively, The
Monster
Club. With the threat of monster attack escalated to lemon yellow,
the club militarizes and renames itself the Monster Squad. You have
to watch these small groups sometimes. Next thing they'll be calling
themselves The Freeman's Monster Republic of the Proletariat and burning
down the Reichstag. The Squad only has two members of note (as the
other members are all young, white, and very, very Aryan): there's
the token fat kid (no more needs be said) and the latest member of the
club: Rudy. All the kids in this club are MAYBE in the 5th
grade (or younger), while Rudy is the cigarette-smoking, leather-clad bad
boy on a 10-speed of Junior High that still hangs out at elementary
schools. I think it's the whole "Big Fish, Small Pond" thing.
Since Rudy's the only one with pubic hair, he's undeniably the coolest kid
on the K-5th grade block. He also knows how to make bullets which
may mean that he's not a total poseur. Who knows.

The real bit of luck the
kids have is when Sean's (the main kid
who's
not that interesting except to say he's the leader) mother picks up Van
Helsing's diary for him at a garage sale. Wait...what?
1) Sean's mom is the coolest ever if she's randomly going to garage
sales looking for occult texts. 2) At what point did Dracula
realize that the diary (which he needs in order to make sure that Evil
rules for a 100 years or something) was missing? Did Dracula go to a
bunch of garage sales and sift through people's old records and baby
clothes looking for the book that could bring about the ultimate
domination of all Good in the world? Gah. Anyway, Sean finds
out the diary is only in German since the German language is the only true
Good and Pure language of the world when it comes to fighting evil.
I'm not joking. There's a major plot device that requires the Squad
find a virgin who can read German so that Evil can be sucked into an
alternate dimension, not of sight or sound, but of crap. But enough
of the boring stuff: Let's see how our monsters faired in this
kiddie film dedicated to them. In fact, it's time for Prizes!
Everyone must have prizes!

Award
for STILL being totally totally lame: The Mummy.

I
don't care what the recent cinematic remakes show: The traditional
Mummy isn't really that scary. In Night of the Living Dead, they
point out that you can always run faster than zombies...it's their sheer
numbers that get you. But the Mummy? He's one fragile,
slow-moving bad guy. Even if you throw in the whole "touch of death"
mystique, it's still not that spooky. It seems that anyone we'd see
as a protagonist will inherently have the ability to nonchalantly stroll
out of danger if a Mummy was involved. Of course, if he was to pick
on the elderly, the blind, or sleeping children he might be a bit more
successful. Who knows? Even Dracula in this film admits he's
pretty lame as he has the Mummy hold his stuff when he doesn't need it.
It makes me wonder why the Mummy readily accepts his role as total Vlad
bitch. I guess 2,000 years of seniority don't count if you're from
Egypt.

The Monster Squad meets
the Mummy twice. The first time because he's randomly hiding in one
of the youngest member's closet for no reason. Personally, I'd love
to have a Mummy in my closet...I think I'd just have trouble
remembering
to feed and walk it. Later on, the Mummy jumps into the back of
their jeep (driven by "Scary German Guy," the only person who speaks
German in Plotville). So how do they kill/stop the Mummy? They
defeat the mummy by unraveling him (by tying a bandage to an arrow and
shooting a tree with it as they drive)...The specifics are unique, but
this is just like they do in every cartoon featuring a Mummy I've ever
seen. We all know that this is the way to go, because it's common
knowledge that Mummies, like rolls of toilet paper, are made up of one
long continuous string of paper. On the plus side, the Mummy makes a
great "Holy Crap THEY'RE UNRAVELLING MY ASS" face when he realizes what
the kids are up to (as pictured to the right.) In the end though, it
only reinforces that the Mummy is the Paulie Shore of the Monster
universe.

Award
for the best cross-dressing: Frankenstein

Yeah,
yeah, yeah...I know that Frankenstein is the name of the creator but very
few people point out the monster's name is Damian (or Demian, depending).
We're going to call him Frankenstein because that's what he is to
everyone. That out of the way, there's not a lot to say about dear
old Frank in this movie. He's reanimated and immediately befriends
the kids. He even takes part in their 80's montage sequence....where
he dresses in women's clothing and looks at a naked picture of the girl
next door while he's wearing big 1980's sunglasses. All in all, it's
kind of cute and reminds you that this is a kids movie. Oh and just
in case you're curious:

Dude does NOT look like a
lady. He does look like my great aunt Millie, though.

Frankenstein ends up
being knocked unconscious whenever he'd be useful and really only saves
the day right at the end by doing a vulcan neck squeeze on Dracula.
Of course, he's still sent to hell despite being the "good" monster, but
more on that later.

Award for the Least
Amount of Screen time (despite rocking): The Gillman

Despite my great love
for how awesome the Gillman is in
this movie, I have to admit he's on the screen for maybe
sixty seconds. I think he's the bonus monster of the film because
he's the least popular, commercially. To make up for that, they made
him so completely hardcore that it's ridiculous. While the wolf man
is sort of scary, all the monsters here are the Universal Studios
cookie-cutter variety. That is to say, no risks were taken because
the director wanted everyone to KNOW
these were supposed to be the classic monsters. Since The Creature
from the Black Lagoon is sort of the redheaded stepchild of the gang (with
the Phantom of the Opera and the
Invisible Man being the orphans chained to the radiator in the attic),
they figured they could make some improvement. Basically, they made
it look less like a rubber diving suit and more like a aquatic monster
that wants to feast on your flesh and suck the marrow from your bones.
Don't believe me just yet?

Don't tell me that's not
hardcore. The best part of the whole thing is that, besides a scary
costume, the guy inside really makes it look like the Gillman is freakin'
pissed to be out of water...an angry fishman is all the more intimidating.
The actor inside the costume is Tom Woodruff, Jr....better known (alright
better known to ME) for playing the lead Alien in more than half of the
"Alien" movies, Pumpkinhead, and the Metaluna Mutant from the Looney Tunes
movie. The guy knows his rubber suits and what makes them tick.

Now you'll notice I
haven't mentioned what local law enforcement has been doing with these
monsters running around. As usual, they do nothing ....until the
last act. Then they show up to effectively do nothing besides get
totally wailed on. Speaking of which, if you saw a giant fishman
rise out of the sewers, covered in spines, claws, and teeth, would you A)
go for your gun or B) try to wrestle it to the ground?

If you answered (B),
then you may have what it takes to be a movie cop. The pay's not
good, and it's hella dangerous, but you'll have some great stories to tell
if you survive. "So Bob, how was work today?" "Well, it was
pretty boring until a giant fish-monster popped my skull like a
grape....pass the salt?" The cops don't end up going for their
weapons...which is weird, because they reach for their guns first the
moment that Dracula and the Wolfman show up. Is it because the
Fishman's not famous enough to be worried about? Nope. The
answer lies in that Dracula & the Wolfman aren't too concerned with
bullets. Sadly, the Fishman is NOT a supernatural monster. As
such:

Damn. They figured
out his only weakness: A shotgun blast to the chest. It's
really sad that the token fat kid is the one that kills my scaly friend.
None of this "come back from the dead" crap, either. Even if you
kill Dracula, his toe will reanimate and find the other parts (thank you,
Castlevania). But the Gillman's just a flesh and blood monster
that's about as supernatural as my mom. So, yeah. While having
a great design and having my favorite monster popping police officers'
heads like grapes, this movie can totally bite me for having "Horace the
fat kid" kill my boy. On a side note, Horace picked up that gun from
the DEAD COP THE GILLMAN HAD KILLED. Makes you wonder what Officer
Black was saving his ammunition for?

Gillman, Fishman,
Creature from the Black Lagoon: You will be missed.

Award
for surviving the most assaults on his genitals: The Wolfman

The
Wolfman is pretty much Dracula's main thug in this movie. He's
always lurking somewhere near him, growling and generally hopping up and
down like his pants are too tight. (It might have something to do
with his "wolf dork" as discussed in the film by two members of the
Monster Squad.) There's a lot of evidence proving that only a silver
bullet can kill a werewolf (as that's what does kill him in the end).
The wolfman gets shot before he can transform (he's actually a nice guy
who doesn't want to kill people but can't help turning into a furry beast
of hell when he sees the full moon)...but that's not what tests the whole
"what can kill a werewolf" premise. You see this movie has some sort
of OBSESSION with the Wolfman's genitalia. Besides the fact that the
kids are talking about his penis while walking down the street, when
they're cornered they come up
with the best strategy: "Kick him in the Nards!" So the kids
escape by kicking the Wolfman in the groin, proving that the wolfman does
indeed have balls (as the fat kids exclaims: "Whoa. Wolfman
has Nards!"...which is THE most memorable line in the movie.) But
the scrotal injury doesn't stop there. The Squad's leader with the
help of his father does a little bit of quick thinking and shoves a STICK
OF DYNAMITE INTO THE WOLFMAN'S CROTCH. He explodes, of course...but
not for long (does he stay exploded....grammar melting....). The
Wolfman reforms and jumps up, very angry about having his genitalia ground
zero for explosives. Apparently, "crotch-related injuries" tested
really well with the film's target demographic. I don't pretend to
understand it, but yeah. The Wolfman's genitals are the subject of
many a cinematic moment. Lucky him.

Award for......er....being
Dracula: Dracula!

Dracula
is, well, Dracula. So many people have played the character and in
this movie, a kids movie about monsters in movies, the actor playing
Dracula (Duncan Regehr) is really just a character playing a
character. In other words: It's Dracula in all his cheesy evil
Halloween glory. He makes scantily clad vampire women and he bears
his fangs (though he doesn't bite anyone on-screen in this movie, since
that would be TOO MUCH for kids to see). What's unique of this
Dracula is that this has got to be the first Dracula I've ever seen
committing arson. Dracula apparently has a big box of dynamite that
he uses to blow up the Monster Squad's treehouse (because we all know that
destroying the enemy's base is the first step to victory). Besides
that, he does a lot of smooth "I'm so very very
Vlad" talking and the occassional turning-into-a-rubber-bat-on-a-string.
Still, in the end, he does end up hardcore taking a page from the
Gillman's book of "How to Deal With Cops, glub glub." As a little
girl starts saying the magic German words of good, he nonchalantly walks
straight to her, killing three cops one after the other without slowing
down. Of course it's all for nothing, since Frankenstein ends up
protecting his virginal girlfriend, who succeeds in saying the magic
words. The words summon a portal to another dimension (using the
same damn special effect from Evil Dead 2) which sucks in both Dracula and
Frankenstein. Frankenstein waves a sad goodbye while holding the
little girl's teddy bear. Kinda sweet. And kind of convenient.
I'd imagine it'd be hard for her to explain to her parents why her
boyfriend is 8 feet tall and made of corpse leftovers. Dracula ends
up being grabbed by Van Helsing...who was apparently trapped in that
dimension or something. That doesn't matter too much. What
does matter is what Van Helsing does as he's carrying Vlad off through the
black hole...

"Monster Squad, you
totally rock"

Of course I'm
paraphrasing...he doesn't say anything but just seeing Van Helsing jump
through a dimensional portal and as he takes Dracula with him into
oblivion giving all the kids a big ol' thumbs up...it boggles my mind.
For some reason I'm reminded of Bill & Ted's excellent adventure.
Not sure why. The only thing missing here is the congratulatory
high-five. Of course that would be dumb, while a thumb from Van
Helsing is totally bitching. I only wish more video games went this
literally when congratulating you for finishing their game.
Hell, I'd play Castlevania more if it'd give me the chance to hear Simon
Belmont say: "Jared, you are like the coolest guy I know.
Here, man, have two thumbs WAY up!" :sigh: My fantasy world is
a spooky and creepy place sometimes.

So the kids have
received a thumbs up from Van Helsing, killed Dracula, the Wolfman, the
Mummy, the Gillman, and as well as inadvertently sending Frankenstein and
his teddy bear off into another dimension (pictured to the left).
I'd have to say that the kids did a pretty good job of totally proving
that all the classic monsters are total pussies. My whole
monster-based belief system has been shaken. I'm not sure where to
go from here. I will say this: Horace, you fat little bastard, if I ever
find you and going to get you for killing that dear sweet fishman of mine.
I swear.

On a complete side note,
I would so wear a t-shirt that said: "I am totally Vlad." I'm THAT
much of a dork. On that charming note, I leave you to your own
devices until next week.